In many branches of industry, but with the semiconductor industry leading the way, embossing (imprinting) technologies are important in order to produce microstructures and/or nanostructures at low expense, low costs and short processing times.
Known imprinting technologies are processes in which a die is pressed by force into an embossing material in order to produce a negative of the die. The embossing material can then be hardened after the embossing process by different chemical and/or physical processes, so that the embossing material correspondingly hardens and is dimensionally stable after the die is removed.
The hardening is done, for example, by irradiation with UV light, by heating by means of heating elements, by electrical and/or magnetic fields, by chemical reaction with a reagent, etc.
During thermal hardening, the heating and cooling are carried out, repeatedly in a chamber, which results in high costs because of stringent energy and time requirements.
An advantage of this invention is a process and a device with which a quick, efficient and economical embossing of a thermally-hardenable embossing material is made possible.
This advantage is achieved with the features of the claims. Advantageous further developments of the invention are indicated in the subclaims. Also, all combinations of at least two of the features indicated in the description, the claims and/or the figures fall within the scope of the invention. In the indicated ranges of values, values as boundary values that lie within the above-mentioned limits are also to be considered as disclosed and can be claimed in any combination.